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30 October 2007

United Airlines

[21 June 2007] The United Airlines computer system responsible for dispatching flights for departure went down, forcing the airline to temporarily ground all flights for about two hours. Ciose to 300 flights were delayed or canceled. But the day after the glitch, United's system, called Unimatic, was not blamed for the error. COO Peter McDonald said the error, which took place during routine testing, was caused by employee error. The error affected both the primary system and the backup. Apparently the employee accidentally disabled both systems during a test run.

According to a report by Baseline, "Michael Boyd, an airline consultant based in Evergreen, Colo., told the Chicago Tribune that United's computer glitch will cost it more than $10 million in lost revenue due to refunds and re-bookings."